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‘I am definitely not a jazz singer’
ELAINE MITCHENER is a singer who defies all categories — and that’s the way she likes it, she tells Chris Searle
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AT SCHOOL in Tower Hamlets in east London, Elaine Mitchener’s flute teacher was a jazz and free-improvising musician who introduced her to the greats — from musicians Charlie Parker to John Coltrane, vocalists from Billie Holiday to Janet Baker and composers such as Bela Bartok and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Thus her inspiration, she stresses, is “environmental. I am definitely not a jazz singer.” As well as a vocalist, she’s a movement artist and composer who's been described the Finanacial Times as a “genre-crossing virtuoso.”
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